Servant Leadership

The term "servant leadership" was coined by Robert Greenleaf in 1970 (see The Power of Servant Leadership), but is based on ancient philosophies of leadership. After the economic collapse following the greed for growth era, perhaps servant leadership is the new style required to re-build businesses and re-build confidence in leaders.

Fons Trompenaars supported this idea in a recent article in people People Management (May 2009). Greenleaf believed that great leaders are motivated by the desire to serve others and see the served grow as people. Trompenaars suggests that this is a strength that is even more in demand in the current challenging times - a commitment to deliver a vision with the knowledge that their actions are always guided by the desire to serve others. He has extended the concept to handling cross-cultural challenges in his book Servant Leadership Across Cultures, contrasting styles of servant leadership in the east and west.

Servant leadership proposes a philosophy of management which is in sharp contrast to the mainstream leadership model based on the exercise and retention of power. But Trompenaars points out that many of the companies in Fortune’s “Best Companies to Work For” follow servant-leadership principles and have links to the Greenleaf Centre for Servant Leadership. Larry Spears, former president of the Center for Servant-Leadership, outlined the 10 characteristics of a servant leader as:

1 Listening - seeks to identify the will of a group in what is being said and what is not being said.
2 Empathy - seeks to understand others, accepting everyone's unique spirit and good intentions. Accepts the person while seeking to correct behaviour or performance.
3 Healing - applies the power to heal self and others, creating wholeness, transformation and integration.
4 Awareness - takes a holistic view of self and situations to increase awareness. Is comfortable with the disturbances that increased awareness brings.
5 Persuasion - seeks to form consensus and convince others rather than using a position of authority to coerce compliance.
6 Conceptualisation - demonstrates the ability to look beyond the operational realities to a concept of the organisation that defines a vision.
7 Foresight - uses a broad range of past experience and intuition to plot the likely outcome of a situation.
8 Stewardship - acts as if authority is only given to hold the current position on trust on behalf of someone else.
9 Commitment to the growth of people - take personal responsibility for the growth of each individual within the organisation.
10 Building community - seeks to build a community among those who work within the organisation.

While Greenleaf is credited with starting this work in the 20th century, the earliest word on the subject may belong to Lao Tzu in Tao Te Ching:

A leader is best
When people are hardly aware of his existence,
Not so good when people praise his government,
Less good when people stand in fear,
Worst, when people are contemptuous.
Fail to honour people, and they will fail to honour you.
But of a good leader, who speaks little,
When his task is accomplished, his work is done!
The people say, “We did it ourselves”